Not happy with simply launching its Stream video service this week, Comcast announced the start of a beta test for Xfinity Games. A partnership with Electronic Arts (confirming Reutersrumor from last year), it's not going to compete with PlayStation and Xbox, but is closer to what Roku, Amazon and Android are already doing for TV gaming. At least for now, the games offered are older and mobile-versions of games like Plants vs Zombies, Real Racing 2 or FIFA 13. There's not a connection for a standard gamepad, so players control them with phones and tablets (right now the list appears to cover iOS, and mainly Samsung Galaxy phones/tablets on the Android side). The main requirement? Comcast's X1 TV platform, so if you have it you can sign up to be a beta tester here. X1 isn't ready to be a powerhouse gaming platform yet approaching the level of OnLive or PlayStation Now, but with this and home automation add-ons, it's clear we're not the only ones thinking of the cable box as a the center of your connected home. Now, let's see if we can get Yu Suzuki to launch a Sega Channel Kickstarter.

As a producer at Ubisoft and founder of Ubisoft Toronto, Jade Raymond had a hand in creating some of the most notable AAA experiences of our time, including Assassin's Creed IIand Watch Dogs. She left the company in October to pursue "new opportunities," and now those ambitions have a name: Electronic Arts. Raymond has joined the company and opened Motive, a new EA studio in Montreal. Motive's first project is the new Star Wars game coming from Uncharted series writer and Creative Director Amy Hennig. Raymond now also oversees Hennig's studio, Visceral Games, and she says Motive will "work in close quarters with the BioWare team," which is responsible for Mass Effect and Dragon Age. No pressure.

As expected, EA took the stage at E3 2015 to showcase the next installment of its popular sports franchises. That, of course, includes FIFA 16, Madden 16, NBA Live 16, NHL 16 and Rory McIlroy PGA Tour. This year, like most others, EA Sports is focusing on evolution rather than revolution, so people familiar with these titles won't notice any major change. But that's not to say some things haven't changed. In the case of FIFA 16, for example, there are all-new defensive mechanics, which will help you defend better ground against attacking players. For NBA 16, EA Sports revealed an app that can take your picture and then use it as a custom character's face -- the most impressive part about this is how it only takes a couple of minutes.

Now that Microsoft's done for the day with Xbox news, it is EA's turn to give us a glimpse at some of its future products. There's no doubt we'll learn more details about the company's upcoming sports titles, including FIFA 16,Madden 16 and UFC. Beyond that, though, EA will likely share additional info on Mirror's Edge: Catalyst, Star Wars: Battlefront and Mass Effect 4. And hey, don't be shocked if there are a few surprises along the way. EA is going to kick off the event at 4PM ET, and you can watch it live on its E3 Live to Play webpage as well as Twitch or YouTube -- video embed after the break.

When EA's quarterly report dropped earlier in May, it included a few tasty game-related tidbits, including a "holiday 2015" launch window for a new Need for Speed. EA today confirmed that Need for Speed will launch on PS4, Xbox One and PC this fall -- and it's a full-on reboot of the series. "With more than 20 years of history in its rear view mirror, we're bringing Need for Speed back with a reboot that delivers on what Need for Speed stands for -- rich customization, authentic urban car culture, a nocturnal open world, and an immersive narrative," EA Community Manager Ben Walke writes. The first teaser for the game is fairly gorgeous and EA says that all of its footage was captured in-game. Watch the video below, and keep your eyes here on June 15th for the first gameplay trailer and official announcement direct from E3 2015.Slideshow-289944

Humble Bundle regularly offers groups of games for the low price of "whatever you want to pay," with the option to send your money to the developers, Humble itself or to charity. Since launching in 2010, Humble has raised more than $50 million for charity -- and its latest bundle looks to add to that total. For the next two weeks, the Humble Origin Bundle 2 benefits only charity and Humble Bundle, since EA has opted out of making any money from this particular sale. The bundle supports Girls Who Code, which encourages young women to pursue computer science degrees, The V Foundation for Cancer Research and buildOn, a group that aims to improve conditions in the developing world by emphasizing women's education. Who knew supporting charity could be so fun?

The studio that created SimCityand The Sims is no more. Today, EA confirmed that it will shut down Maxis Emeryville, displacing the folks primarily responsible for the aforementioned titles. In a statement, EA said that it'll relocate Maxis' development to its other offices in Redwood Shores, California; Salt Lake City; Helsinki; and Melbourne, Australia. The company plans to move forward with projects already in the works, including an expansion pack for The Sims 4 and ongoing support for the existing The Sims and SimCity faithful. Those two are massively popular PC titles, and the latter finally arrived on Mac in 2013 with players everywhere encountering a truckload of launch issues.

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Wed, 04 Mar 2015 16:58:00 -050021|21149743http://www.engadget.com/2014/11/20/playdate-dragon-age-inquisition-ps4/%3Futm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%26ncid%3Drss_semi
http://www.engadget.com/2014/11/20/playdate-dragon-age-inquisition-ps4/http://www.engadget.com/2014/11/20/playdate-dragon-age-inquisition-ps4/%3Futm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%23commentsWho doesn't like fighting dragons? That's a serious question. If you excitedly answered "I do!" then this edition of Playdate is just for you. Today we're going to be streaming the first big role-playing game of this new set of consoles, and it's none other than Dragon Age: Inquisition from the folks at BioWare. You know, the studio behind the Mass Effectseries and Baldur's Gate. It's a sort of choose-your-own adventure affair in a mature medieval world where decisions made in previous games affect how the story plays out in this third entry. It's also the first RPG running on publisher Electronic Arts' extremely impressive (and apparently pretty versatile) Frostbite toolset that's perhaps best known for powering the Battlefield franchise. And if you're wondering how it all looks, you've come to the right place. We'll be streaming gameplay from the PlayStation 4 starting at 7 p.m. Eastern / 4 p.m. Pacific on this very page.

SimCity hasn't been on mobile devices for a while -- the last titlesurfaced way back in 2010. You'll get another crack at metropolis building pretty soon, though, as EA has quietly teased SimCity BuildIt for Android devices, iPhones and iPads. Details are scarce right now, but it's already apparent that this will be a big, big visual upgrade over the last incarnation; you'll see 3D graphics that more closely resemble SimCity's recent reboot than a cut-down phone release. We've reached out to EA for a launch date and more info on the game mechanics. However BuildIt works, we're just hoping that it fares a lot better than its desktop counterpart.

If you've ever wondered how video game studios transform real-life people into their multi-pixeled personas, here's one method. SB Nation'sSarah Kogod recently made the trip to Baltimore where EA was set to capture facial images from the Ravens' players for Madden NFL 15. There, she encountered the developers new "mobile" rig that leverages a dozen DSLRs situated in two rows of six each in order to snap all of the close-up details. The frame is part TV stand and part wheel chair lift that allows the entire thing to be positioned just so from a connected laptop. In fact, three teams, each outfitted with one of the multi-camera rigs, set out this summer to capture player images from all 32 NFL teams during OTAs and training camp. Before now, artists have had to work from stock photos in order to create a player's virtual counterpart, and accuracy suffered. The folks at EA say that as games become increasingly more life-like, that gamers notice "any blemish that's off... people catch that."

Thanks to EA's all-you-can-game subscription, early access to Madden 15 for those who fork over $5 per month is the closest thing the gridiron faithful will get to a demo this year. On top of that, gameplay for early access to the full title is capped at six hours according to the gaming service's Twitter account. In the past, there hasn't been a time limit for demos, but players were limited to options like one quarter of action at a time, and sometimes with a couple of pre-selected teams. Of course, EA Access is only available on Xbox One, so the PS4 faithful will have to wait until launch day for kickoff.

It seems as if this week is a good one to get stuff on the cheap or even for free. First, Marvel announced a promo yesterday which gave access to its Unlimited comics service for 99 cents, and now EA has quietly revealed that it's giving away copies of The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection. You'll need to have Origin, EA's software distribution platform, installed on your machine to take advantage of this deal, but it's as easy as entering a code for old and new users alike. Just don't expect EA to keep supporting the classic game after you install it, since the publisher brought closure to that a few days ago. The Windows download on Origin will be available until July 31st at 1:00AM ET, which means there's plenty of time to let it all sink in and cancel whatever you had planned for the weekend.

Sure, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft all have their own internally developed games, but there's so much more to E3 than what The Big Three show off for their respective platforms. Even better, almost every game from the likes of Activision and Electronic Arts will appear on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One so there's almost no need to choose which platform to buy if you want to play a specific title, either. Let's get down to business, shall we?

You like playing with people's lives, right? When The Sims 4 hits this fall, you'll be able to take that to an entirely new level. Your virtual people will have "heart," can die of laughter and you can import someone else's custom person (or house, even) directly into your game, pretty simply from the look of it. When and where does it all happen? September 2nd this year, and on PC.

"We don't have limitless resources. We wanted to bring the game to as many people as possible and right now that was the 360 and PS3." That's what 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil's lead producer Matt Prior had to say about the title not launching on Xbox One or PlayStation 4. Which is to say, EA's leaning on console-adoption numbers as the primary reason for the lack of a proper game on Microsoft's and Sony's newest consoles. Instead, EA Sports plans to bring some "engaging" World Cup-themed content to FIFA 14's Ultimate Team mode, in the hopes that'll be enough to satisfy disappointed Xbox One and PS4 owners.

SimCity has been surrounded by problems since its reboot last year, including having to deal with negative feedback due to the nature of its "always-on" gameplay. Now, EA's hoping to turn some of these frowns into smiles, announcing that SimCity's long-awaited offline mode will be available starting today. The update, after getting through its final test phase, began rolling out earlier this morning and should be at your mercy momentarily. As a result, EA says there's going to be server down time "for a few hours," so expect to put those city-building skills on hold for a little while. Don't worry, it'll be over before you know it. In the meantime, check out the video tutorial after the break.

When you're the CEO of the second largest video game publisher in the world, people have a tendency to take what you say seriously. Case in point, Electronic Arts' Andrew Wilson recently revealed his company's plans for virtual reality. At a South by Southwest panel, Wilson said that his company is less focused on the technology of VR, and more interested in exactly how people consume it. As he sees it, we interact with games in three different ways: leaning back, leaning in and looking over -- relating to console, PC and mobile gaming, respectively. With VR, he thinks there will be a fourth: getting in. He says that this could happen either via a headset or even a hologram popping up from your living room floor, and he's pushing his team to explore it.

Think of this along the lines of Amazon (hypothetically) announcing that it'd accept Bitcoin for payment and you're on the right track; that there's another major player in the VR space helps validate the medium. While this could all be taken as pie-in-the-sky speculation, the fact that EA is clearly invested in the virtual reality isn't anything to write off -- just look at what the company's done with mobile gaming.

Back in September, EA Sports announced that it would shutter its NCAA Football series after losing support from the college sports governing body and due to ongoing legal spats. As part of that news, the video game studio said that it had settled its case with those suing over the use of their likeness in its releases. During the course of the last week, though, a federal district court judge ordered documents be made public in the Ed O'Bannon player-likeness suit. So why does that matter? Well, as it turns out, EA sought use of player names and faces "just as they are shown on TV broadcasts", and a document shows that the NCAA knew "hidden" rosters were being used back in 2007. This news comes after an EA Sports exec said last year that the NCAA gave it the official OK to match up real names and with virtual jersey numbers -- directly identifying actual players. And as AL.com reported, the NCAA is suing EA Sports for not protecting it during the aforementioned settlement proceedings.

What's more, in exchange for the ability to pack its games with player likenesses, EA agreed to sprinkle in "academic-related features." That's why "academic prestige" is part of the recruiting pitch options in Dynasty mode and explains the inclusion of player suspensions in previous releases. You know, the whole "violation of team rules" type thing? The O'Bannon lawsuit is still in progress, so it could be quite a while before we find out just how much those player likenesses were really worth.

With the runaway success of Candy Crush Saga, it's perfectly natural to wonder just how many people are dropping coin in freemium mobile games. One firm's answer, however, might surprise you. A very small number -- 0.15 percent, to be exact -- of total mobile payers contribute half of monthly in-game revenue, according to in-app marketing company Swrve. The outfit also says that over 60 percent of the money made within the first two weeks of a player's life is made on the first day. Meaning, if most people install a game and don't make any purchases almost immediately, they likely won't at all. The report comes from a limited sample, but designers hoping to build the next fragile confection-likephenomenon are probably studying it for secrets right now. We've embedded the provided infographic after the break should you want a peek at a whole lot of graphs for yourself.

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Thu, 27 Feb 2014 23:37:00 -050021|20840154http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/01/irl-fifa-14-for-xbox-one-playstation-4/%3Futm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%26ncid%3Drss_semi
http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/01/irl-fifa-14-for-xbox-one-playstation-4/http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/01/irl-fifa-14-for-xbox-one-playstation-4/%3Futm_source%3DFeed_Classic%26utm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_campaign%3DEngadget%23commentsWelcome to IRL, an ongoing feature where we talk about the gadgets, apps and toys we're using in real life and take a second look at products that already got the formal review treatment.

What? You thought we were done covering the next-gen consoles? Just because we've written full reviews of the Xbox One and PS4 (along with a comparison guide), doesn't mean we've said everything there is to say. Now that more games are starting to roll out post-launch, you might see us get hands-on with some of them, especially if that game is FIFA 14, and especially if the reviewer is Engadget's resident football fan Edgar Alvarez. Read on for a double-dose of impressions, with feedback from both consoles.

The many gamers buying an Xbox One for Titanfall (or don't mind the Xbox 360 and PC versions) can now mark a date on their calendars: EA says that the shooter will reach North America on March 11th, 2014. While that's more than four months away, the company is offering a Collector's Edition that just might encourage a few pre-orders among well-off players. If you can spend $250 -- yes, that's half as much as an Xbox One -- you'll get an 18-inch, LED-lit Atlas Titan figurine that's likely to be the centerpiece of your gaming den. You'll also receive an art book and a large schematic poster. You'll want to act quickly if you like the idea of a miniature (albeit stationary) robot, though. EA says that the Collector's Edition is available in "extremely limited" numbers, which suggests that supply will run out by launch day.

Whether you refer to it as fútbol, football or soccer, there's no denying that the FIFA franchise is one of the sports' best options for gaming across the various existing platforms. Now, following in the footsteps of its relative Madden 25, FIFA 14 is available for iOS as well as Android. As with its sporting game sibling, the renowned title's latest mobile edition can be downloaded at no cost, with EA hoping to bring in revenue by way of in-app purchases -- which includes anything from Ultimate Team points to the unlocking of additional game modes (such as Manager and Tournament). Be prepared to make some room for FIFA 14 on your device though, since the app's size is a little more than 1GB in both the App Store and Google Play.

EA's kicking off its free-to-play mobile strategy with an iOS version of the much-anticipated Madden NFL 25. Available now via the App Store, the popular gaming franchise arrives on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad as a gratis download, though there are (naturally) a slew of in-app purchases that Electronic Arts is hoping you'll splurge on. For example, there's an All Madden Bundle priced at $100. As far as gameplay goes, the publisher says this year's Madden on iOS has been improved with much better touch controls, which should go hand-in-hand with stuff like Ultimate Team and its trademark official licenses for all 32 squads. Speaking of which, we're really wondering who's listed as the starting QB for the New York Jets...

Electronic Arts is a mainstay in the game industry. From early days on the PC, pre-game consoles, to its current role as one of the world's largest game companies, the EA name's been synonymous with gaming. To stay in such a position, the publisher's had to adapt to changing trends in gaming, as games moved from home PCs to game consoles, and now to the internet. The next console generation is no exception, with EA promising two of its largest franchises -- Battlefield and FIFA -- for the launch of both Xbox One and PlayStation 4 this holiday. And that's to say nothing of EA's investment in a nascent game studio composed of the people responsible for the Call of Duty franchise, Respawn Entertainment -- a pretty major coup considering that those folks previously worked at EA's main competitor, Activision.

It's with all this in mind that we sat down to speak with EA Chief Operations Officer Peter Moore at Gamescom 2013, not long after Moore held press attention captive in an hour-long presentation. He said his company's current dedication to online functionality in its games is unmatched: "We don't ship a game at EA that is offline," he told us, an echo of his competition's claims about the next generation of game consoles. Head below the break for a lengthy discussion with Moore on all things gaming in 2013.

Haven't got your fill of all things next generation? Well, stay tuned because Gamescom 2013 promises to shed a little more light on the coming console war and we're bringing the news to you live. While Microsoft's shied away from throwing a full blown presser here in Cologne, Germany, rival Sony's still got some PlayStation 4 (and Vita) secrets to share with the world at 10AM PST / 1PM EST today. But let's not get ahead of ourselves: Electronic Arts is also doing it up properly for this Euro-centric industry tradeshow, hosting its own live event at 7AM PST / 10AM EST. You can catch all the news as it happens at the times below.